


he's the giant of the mountains

by consumptive_sphinx



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Complicated Feelings About Such, Gen, Gerda Mayer, Parental Relationships, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 12:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13146678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: Some anecdotes, an odd poem, and incidental history.





	he's the giant of the mountains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moriwen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moriwen/gifts).



_He’s the giant of the mountains;_  
_they call him Count Carrots._  
_How he hates that nickname._  
_Let me tell you now he came by it._

~

The twins are terrified.

This is to be expected — their mother is almost certainly dead, their city sacked, and they are being held by Maglor Fëanorion whose hands are yet bloody. But Maglor has younger brothers, and while he might once have been able to let terrified children sit alone, his younger brothers are now gone and gone and gone, and all that he sees is the shadows of Carnistir’s old nightmares and Ambarto’s visions of fire in the twins’ faces.

Maglor sits down near the two of them, and waits for their eyes to stop darting from his face to his hands before he speaks. “There is a poem that I heard when I was small,” he says, and perhaps it is unwise to speak of captured princesses and the giants they trick, to these children, but he could not have left them be.

They didn’t speak of captured princesses in Valinor; that much is a lie. But it is an old tale, and one Maglor heard from his father who heard it from an uncle who did not want such stories forgotten, and if helps — then it helps.

~

 _Some say he brought her gifts of precious stones_  
_to tempt her to love him. This is untrue,_  
_he was simpler than that. He brought her, I think,_  
_bilberries from the forest, baskets of raspberries,_  
_mushrooms, many sorts, which Bohemia excels in_ _  
_ _and clumsy importunings, day after day._

 _He brought her wild strawberries, gathered from steep hills._  
_She was used to sugar and cream; she was used to pretty bowls_  
_from which to eat them. He roasted venison: the smoke_  
_stung her eyes, she said. She feared the spluttering fat._

~

“This is a poem my father told to me, when I was very small,” Elrond says to Elladan, when Elladan is young enough that he still wants to hear stories before he falls asleep but is old enough that the fairy tales Lindir makes up will no longer serve.

Elladan privately doubts that his father was ever small. But he sits wide-eyed and watches Elrond’s face.

His father speaks softly, uncertainly, of a princess going wandering in search of flowers, of a giant plucking her up and keeping her. He gets more confident as he talks about how beautiful the mountain was, of the rivers and the forests in the lands of the giant, of how the giant tried clumsily to treat the princess well; he goes soft when he speaks of the grieving king and queen in their castle, wondering where their daughter had gone.

The giant gave the princess carrots, which turned into her friends and her servants and her dog at a wish, and Elrond speaks of the magic with a wonder that makes Elladan feel it too, and the carrots wilted, and Elrond sounds almost pained, and the princess hatched a clever plan and asked the giant to count his carrots to ensure that he would never run out, and Elrond speaks uncertainly again of the giant going to look for her, and the castle walls that kept him out.

There is a long silence after Elrond finishes.

“Good night,” Elrond says finally, and leaves, and Elladan cannot shake the feeling that he has seen something he should not have.

~

 _Then the princess picked some carrots, the freshest, the strongest,_ _  
_ _and turned two into horses, and one into the prince,_

 _the semblance of him who she loved._  
_They rode away with the speed of a wish,_  
_through forests of pine,_  
_through thickets, past mountain streams,_

 _into the valley below._  
_(Do not fear, do not falter,_  
_do not yet fall behind.._  
_Good Hope, stay by my side,)_

_so the princess prayed._

~

“My lord,” Glorfindel says in a low voice, when the children have gone to bed and Elrond hovers by the railing of the balcony, looking out over the valley. “Are you — is everything well?”

Elrond doesn’t respond for a moment, and then shakes himself as if from a dream. “It is nothing,” he says, too quickly, and then, “It is nothing,” again.

~

 _When I was small, I called his name into the forest:_  
_‘Count Carrots! Count Carrots!’ then leapt into bed, half in fear._   
_He didn’t come for me though. Could it be that perhaps he forgave me?_  
_He loves children, they say — may the forest stay green for him ever._


End file.
